Friday, December 31, 2004

When i came back from my vacation few days ago and got online to check my emails, i received some message from the OOo project people, Scott Carr (Documentation Co-Lead), Charles-H. Schulz (Lead of the Native-Lang Confederation), and Diane (who helped fixing the Indonesian OOo Project problems and bugs). They asked me whether i am OK after the biggest ever tsunami tragedy that swapped most of Asian countries, including my countries, Indonesia. They was kind of worried if i was affected with the tragedy and they waited for my reply for two days.

I have replied them and they were relieved to find me safe. They also send out few email to many OOo volunteers around Asia, including India which was totally broken after the tsunami waves. Unfortunately, i can't make any contact with Utomo, which is another Indonesia Volunteer who works as QA in the OOo project. I hope he is OK.

Here is the email that i received from Charles-H., Scott Carr, and Diane :

Charles-H. Schulz

Sunil, Khairil, Javier, Utomo, Willy, Raman, Viswath, Mugunth,

We all learned about that awful earthquake that shook the entire ASIAPAC
region. We also learned that there are countless deaths, and on behalf
of the Native-Lang Confederation and OpenOffice.org, I would like to
express the deepest condolences to all the countries and people who are
affected by this tragedy.
I also hope, in the first place, that you are all safe and that you
didn't lose anybody you know in the earthquake.
Please feel free to reply if you are able to. We would love to know you
are here and healthy.

Best Regards,

Charles-H. Schulz,
Lead of the Native-Lang Confederation,
OpenOffice.org

Dianebeen watching for you, Willy, since the earthquake... it will be nice to see
your name pop up in the mailbox again... I hope you and your family are all ok.

Thursday, December 30, 2004

Microsoft is investigating three new unpatched Windows flaws that security researchers have described as highly critical. The flaws, which were revealed publicly on the Bugtraq security mailing lists over the holiday weekend, were first reported by a group of security researchers from China called Xfocus.

The three flaws exist in the LoadImage API (application programming interface), the Windows animated cursor (*.ani) file type, and in the Windows Help parser, respectively. All three are present in all modern Windows versions, including Windows Server 2003, Windows XP, Windows NT 4.0, and Windows 2000. However, Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2), which is widely acknowledged as the most secure client version of Windows Microsoft has yet made, is only susceptible to two of the three flaws.

Like previous image format-based vulnerabilities, the LoadImage-based flaw could be exploited by a malicious Web page or HTML email that displays a specially-made image file, icon, or cursor. Victims could find their machines remotely controlled by hackers.

The animated cursor flaw can be used to crash or freeze a victim's machine, security researchers say. This particular flaw does not affect XP SP2. The final flaw, involving the way Windows parses help files, triggers a buffer overflow error that could help hackers remotely control a PC. However, you would have to open a malicious help file via the Internet or email for the flaw to be exploited.

Security researchers at Secunia have described the flaws as "highly critical" and are advising users not to visit untrusted Web sites. For its part, Microsoft says it is investigating the flaws, but the software giant also voiced its concern that Xfocus publicly revealed the flaws before alerting them. "Microsoft is disappointed that Xfocus took actions that could put computer users at risk by not following the commonly accepted industry practice of privately reporting security vulnerabilities to software vendors," a Microsoft spokesperson said. The company says that no know exploits for these vulnerabilities currently exist, but that it will release fixes for these flaws as soon as possible.

Wednesday, December 29, 2004

I just came back from my vacation to Tawangmangu and Sarangan for two days with my relatives. It was fun until the second day when we went to Sarangan to enjoy the lake there. The road was awful and so slippery since it was raining. We had to stopped for a few times because our brake was overheatted and it was shocking. Finally we had our change to enjoy the boat in the lake and riding horse in our last day (today). We played card and also walked around the place, since it was a good place to have a walk to enjoy the nature and also the fresh air.

I read the news that a Tsunami waves has killed many people in some Asia countries. I hope that they who were left can accept this tragedy and it will be fixed as soon as possible.

Monday, December 27, 2004

Perl.Santy is a worm written in Perl script that attempts to spread to Web servers running versions of the phpBB 2.x bulletin board software prior to 2.0.11, which are vulnerable to the PHPBB Remote URLDecode Input Validation Vulnerability. Though it was first originally discovered only affecting phpBB 2.0.11 below, for some reasons, it has been updated to affect 2.0.11 also. It also uses Google search engine to find it's next target for the first version and now, it has been enhanced to support the use of AOL and Yahoo also. Now, it has 3 variants, Santy, Santy.b and Santy.C. You may also find the Santy.b SourceCode.

For those who runs a phpBB discussion board, it is recommended to upgrade to phpBB 2.0.11 and newer (if there are any) and also upgrade to PH 4.3.10 or 5.0.3 which also fix many vulnerability found on PHP 4.3.9 and 5.0.2. You can get them at PHP's Official Website

Sunday, December 26, 2004

Today is my last posting before i have my vacation for two days in Sarangan. Today i will go with my girlfriend and my cousins to Galeria Mall to have fun (probably eating as well) at night, and in the morning, i will held a small snooker competition at my house with my uncle, cousins, and other relatives. It not very often that we can held such competition like this, because we rarely meet each other. Only once a year, so it's a perfect time to do some activities together.

My GMail account has 2 bugs that has not been solved by the GMail Development team, although i have submitted a request. Maybe because it's holiday so nobody is working on this bug. Perhaps next week it will be solved. The bugs are i cannot see my trash folder, thus i can't empty all messages on the trash folder so my quota is increasing wild. I received a lot of emails everyday, so it is a big problem for me. The second bug is my Inbox link always display 5 new messages, although i have read all messages on my Inbox folder. It didn't effect on the GMail functionality, but it is a little bit annoying to me. I hope they will fix it soon as possible.

The great news is that my GMail invitation has increased again up to 7 invitations. Before the increasement, my invitation remaining were three, but now it's up by four. I thought the maximum invitation quota was 6, but i was quite suprised that i got 7. My friend once got 11 invitations.

Saturday, December 25, 2004

Merry Christmas to all of you that reads my blog (and for those who haven't read my blog site yet). It's a good day and sun shines not too brightly. It's a cool day with a lot of joy that many people have waited for a long time. Many people will go to church with their sons/daughters, wife/husband, relatives, or even their friends to celebrate Christmas Day. Well, i wish you all had a great christmas day.

The day after tommorrow i will be off for two days, since i have to go to Sarangan, and it is a vacation place, so it doesn't have an Internet connection (i assume so), so my next posting will be 29 of December (unless i have a lot of idea, thus i will write it as 27 and 28's postings). Enjoy your holiday :)

Friday, December 24, 2004

Today is 24 of December, and for Christian people, it is one of the days that has been expected that would come, since it was time to celebrate a christmas party at the church. I will go to my church at 4 PM today and celebrate Christmas Night with all of the Christian people at Santo Antonius Kotabaru Church. There will be three schedule, but i will come to the first one, which will be held at 5 PM because i want to have a date also with my girlfriend after the party.

Last night, i played card game with my cousins and we played and laughed until 11.30 PM. It was fun and we shall do that tonight :)
One of my cousin came from Jakarta, but unfortunately, his brother can't came along, since he has to stay at Australia. My sister can't joined our joy together because she didn't go back this month (she has come back last month).

Thursday, December 23, 2004

I got a new bed today accidentally. It was supposed to replace my old bed that was located on my sister's bed room (we used to share our room, but after junior high school i got my own room). When the new bed arrived, it won't suit into my old bed since it was bigger, so it was switched with my bed and as exchange, i got the new bed. The bad news, it still doesn't fit perfectly, so my mother asked a bigger bed size and they were sent about an hour later.

Since it is a new bed, it has bad smell and still has a harder pump then my previous bed. Well, that's for today's blog. I have to pick my cousin and his family right after writing this blog :)

Wednesday, December 22, 2004

For the last five days, i have made my self bussier than ever with OpenOffice.org Documentation Project. I have to change the status file, sending an issues and attachment to OOo's Issue Tracker, and also uploading the translation files into the Project's Website. I also have to do the same to it's mirror site, so this is a energy consuming task, but i enjoyed it. It is fun to be able to contribute to the OpenOffice.org community, since they are so frienly, even though we never met before, just via emails.

Also i am waiting for an approval for my access to the CVS site on the OOo's developer since i need that access to modify Indonesian page as soon as possible after i submit an issue to the Documentation Project. This is my first experience dealing with CVS and also SSH access, but i will learn it as soon as possible.

Tuesday, December 21, 2004

I recently browsing to Opera's Download Page and discovered that Opera has silencely launched an update for their product, called Opera 7.54u1 (i presume this is update 1) but has not been officially announced at their website, so i went to Planet Mirror and download the latest version of Opera and install it at home.

I was hoping that Opera has fixed a CSS bug and compatibility in this version, but i was wrong. I use my field work project to check it, but it still displays the same bug i received when i use 7.54. I don't see any improvement on CSS compatibility. I was a little bit dissapointed, since Mozilla (including Firefox) and IE renders the page well enough (maybe there is a small bug on IE, but as global, it's quite good and usable). I hope that they will update it soon and released their next version of Opera which includes a big updates to CSS compatibility, since Opera lacks this functionality.

Monday, December 20, 2004

Today is 20 of December, that means, five days to Christmas and also 12 days to New Years, a moment that has been long waited by many people, including my friends and my relatives, since we had a change to meet up together and have our reunion at the end of year. Some friends of mine will be back to their home town (Jogja) at 23, and some of them will come at 26.

Unfortunately, i have to go to Sarangan at 26 until 28 December with all my relatives and we will have our holidays in a cool place. We are planning to have some barbeque party which is suitable for a cool place. There will be an annual year meeting in DeBritto, my senior high school, but i will not make it, since i will arrive at 28, but the event will be held at 8.00 AM. Sorry guys....

Sunday, December 19, 2004

Mozilla 1.7.5 has been released. This latest update from the long-lived 1.7 branch contains a version of Gecko virtually identical to the one in Mozilla Firefox 1.0. New features not found in Mozilla 1.7.3 include the NPRuntime extensions to the Netscape Plugin API and undetectable document.all support. This release is called 1.7.5 as that's the underlying Mozilla version that Firefox 1.0 reports itself as being (1.7.4 was skipped in case that number was needed for a security update).

GTK+ is a multi-platform toolkit for creating graphical user
interfaces. Offering a complete set of widgets, GTK+ is
suitable for projects ranging from small one-off tools to
complete application suites.

GTK+ has been designed from the ground up to support a range
of languages, not only C/C++. Using GTK+ from languages such
as Perl and Python (especially in combination with the Glade
GUI builder) provides an effective method of rapid application
development.

GTK+ is free software and part of the GNU Project. However,
the licensing terms for GTK+, the GNU LGPL, allow it to be
used by all developers, including those developing proprietary
software, without any license fees or royalties. GTK+ is the
only 100% free-of-cost open source industrial-strength GUI
toolkit available today.

Since its origins as the toolkit for the GNU Image
Manipulation Program (GIMP), GTK+ has been used in a wide
range of software. Notably, GTK+ is the foundation of the
GNOME desktop; GTK+ 2.6 will be incorporated into version
2.10 of the GNOME desktop.

What's new in GTK+ 2.6======================

GTK+ 2.6 adds significant new functionality while maintaining
source and binary compatibility with GTK+ 2.4. Highlights of
new features and improvements in GTK+ 2.6 are:

New icon view widget

The GtkIconView widget displays a tree model as a grid of
labeled icons. Items can be selected by clicking or rubber-banding.
GtkIconView uses the same GtkTreeModel data storage interface
as GtkTreeView.

New about dialog widget

The GtkAboutDialog widget is a replacement for the GnomeAbout
dialog in the libgnomeui library. In addition to the features
found in the GnomeAbout dialog, it supports displaying of
license information and http: and mailto: links.

New file chooser button

The GtkFileChooserButton widget can be embedded in a dialog to
allow the user to select a file or folder. It replaces the
GnomeFileEntry widget in the libgnomeui library

New menu tool button

The GtkMenuToolButton widget is a toolbar button which
displays a dropdown menu, like 'Back' and 'Forward' buttons
commonly found in web browsers.

New cell renderers

The GtkCellRendererCombo cell renderer displays a string in a
cell, and allows to edit it using a combo box. The
GtkCellRendererProgress cell renderer displays a numeric value
in the form of a progress bar.

Changes in the file chooser widget

The new GtkFileChooser widget which was introduced in 2.4 has
been improved in many ways. It is possible to enter paths in
the location dialog now, the file list has typeahead search
and loading large directories has been made faster.

Changes in GtkComboBox

The combo box can now display trees, insensitive rows and
separators. In themes where the combobox is displayed as a list,
scrolling is now supported, and selection follows the mouse.

Changes in the tree view widget

GtkTreeView has acquired the necessary features to support the
improvements in the file chooser and combo box: typeahead,
hover selection, hover expand, separators and insensitive
rows.

Changes in GtkEntry, GtkLabel and GtkTextView

GtkLabel now supports rotated and ellipsized text. GtkEntry and
GtkTreeView respect the backspace-deletes-character Pango attribute.
Selectable labels are in the focus chain and the selection can be
copied using drag and drop.

Changes in Clipboard/Selection/Drag and drop handling

GTK+ provides notification about selection ownership changes
and supports clipboard persistency. There is a convenience API
for handling text, image and file targets.

Icon Themes

GTK+ follows the icon theme specification for directory
locations. Window icons and images can be themed. There are
various new stock icons, e.g. media player icons.

Performance improvements

The chunk size for incremental transfers of big selections
has been increased, reducing the number of necessary
roundtrips. GTK+ uses sync counters to speed up window
resizing. The efficiency of GtkListStore and GtkUIManager
has been improved by changing the used algorithms and data
structures. Icon themes are cached in an mmap()able cache file
to reduce memory consumption and disk seek overhead. The cost
of intra-library function calls has been reduced by avoiding
PLT redirections.

Win32-specific changes

The ms-windows (Wimp) theme engine and the IME input method
module have been integrated into the GTK+ sources.

Other changes

- gdk-pixbuf loaders can be disabled at runtime
- gdk-pixbuf supports simple rotation
- GTK+ provides an API to create HIG-conform
message dialogs
- GTK+ provides an API for stock-like buttons
- gtk_init() has been reimplemented on top of
the new GLib GOption API
- Applications can provide an alternative button
order, and there is a setting to activate it
- Modules to be loaded can be specified by a
setting
- The pixbuf theme engine has been integrated into
the GTK+ sources
- The scroll wheel can be used to switch notebook
tabs and to scroll menus
- Ellipsization is supported in treeview cells,
progress bars and status bars
- The ABI has been cleaned up and the list of exported
symbols is enforced

Friday, December 17, 2004

I have started Indonesian OOo Documentation Project for a while and it has released some documentation, howto, manuals, and also SETUP GUIDE in Indonesian language for OpenOffice.org, the most wide used office application in OpenSource environment. Firstly, i was only translating Setup Guide for Indonesian Language, but as time flows, i wanted to translate some of the documentation for my language and i will never be able to do this all by my self, so i put this into Jogja's LUG (Linux User Group) and they were optimistic that this project will be a successfull project and there we started this project until now.

Right now, we already have 11 contributors, including me and we have 17 finished documents, 5 on revision phase, 11 on translation phase, and still 19 new documents that has not been translated yet. We are looking forward to look another contributor to help us to find another documentation and also translating them.

We are planning to joined the Native Lang project on OpenOffice.org community to make our project getting bigger and focused on our local promotion and also we will have our own website that can be used to upload materials about howtos, manuals, setup guide, and any other files related to OpenOffice.org. Right now, we are making our proposal and we hope that next year, it will be done.

I want to thanks Derek Dregger, Scott Carr, and also Gerry Singleton that has helped me much about this project and responding my email, comments, issues, etc.

Thursday, December 16, 2004

Today (or i should say yesterday), PHP has released another stable version for their PHP version 4 (4.3.10) and 5 (5.0.3). I have downloaded it today at my lab and successfully installed it at my computer (both Windows and Linux). In Windows, i have to uninstall the previous version and install the newer one, but in Linux, i don't have to do that, since i only have to compile and build a new version that will automatically overwrite the previous version.

Unfortunately, i can't install XSLT module just like the previous version. I have found the perfect parameters to install a XSLT modules, but when it comes to compile time, it stucks with an unreferenced variables or so. So i reconfigure it and delete the line with '--enable-xslt' '--with-iconv-dir' and '--with-sablot-dir'. I don't know what's wrong with this. If i use the older RPM version, the XSLT modules can be activated perfectly, since i only have to install php-xslt packes. I am hoping that there are somebody out there can help solve this problem for me :)

Tuesday, December 14, 2004

Next year, there will be a gamers year, since many console games will be published, such as PSP, Nintendo DS, and some which are mysterious and we don't know for sure when it will be launched, such as XBox2, PlayStation 3, PSTwo, and a lot of great games. Yet another factors are the online facility that slowly became a standard in a big game, such as Halo, Counter Strike, etc. With it, we can play with another people around the world using Internet connection.

One of the game that i'm waiting for is Final Fantasy XII, which should be available this month in Japan, but i prefer to wait until the US version is released (usually it took a year) since it's hard to understand the storyline if we play the original version, since it was in Japannese language. Final Fantasy is an extraordinary game which is developed by Squaresoft, which in turn to be Squarenix. It has an excellent graphics, storyline, and also a bunch of side quest that never makes you borred with the original quest. Can't wait to play it.

Monday, December 13, 2004

I have received my last signature to finish this semester and all i have to do is sending it to my lecturer tommorrow. If i have do that, it means that it will be the end of this semester, since i have nothing to do again and i will have a long vacation until next January. I don't know where will we be going next vacation, but i'm pretty sure that it will be a great holiday since there will be new year celebration also.

Meanwhile i have started my final project even though it's not officially started yet, since i have to do a registration first next January to get an official lecturer and also noticed by my faculty. I started to make a home page for the system, but it's not online right now. I will put it online when it close to final release and can be used as testing purposes.

Sunday, December 12, 2004

For the last few months i have been using RSS Aggregator application (FeedReader for Windows platform and Liferea for Linux platform) and i'm quite satisfied with it's performance. With this application, i can grab and download any news updates everytime i got online and it will be saved on the application itself, so i can get read it anytime i want without having to be online everytime.

I grab as many RSS feed as possible so i can get a list of updated news since i need new information everyday about what has happened in the world when i'm not online. One of my collection is Dilbert comics strips, which can be found at http://dwlt.net/tapestry/dilbert.rdf. It's a good feed from Scott Adams and it reveals some of the management theory or social interactions that happened in the office or your daily work environments.

Two days ago i borrowed an Indonesian version of Dilbert Principles that was launched at 1997. I am reading right now and i found some information added by Scott to reveals the truly management concepts inside the corporation. Unfortunately, it wasn't translated perfectly, as it missed some of the real meaning of the text, but it's ok for me. For you that likes comics strips, you might download and install PHPGrabComics from Sourceforge. It has a complete list of comic strips, including Dilbert and it runs on web pages, so it can be viewed by many people around your office.

Saturday, December 11, 2004

Up until now, i have know some of my marks, even though it is not officially published, but i can guess some of them (and some of them has been published by the lecturer). I got an A on Compiler and CCNA (this two subjects has published their score updates) and the rest hasn't, but i can predict that i have a possibility to get a perfect score this semester (4,0).

The fastest grade comes from CCNA, which is A, and the second one is compiler, that was published few hours after our final test and i got 92 out of 100. For the robotics, i got 91 on the mid test, and 85 on the final test, and i can take a conclusion that i can get an A, but we will find out in a few weeks. For my field work, i'm pretty sure that i can get an A, and either does my music and ethics class. If it come true, then my wish after seven semester is fulfilled. I wanted to get a perfect score for a semester since i need it badly to raise my IPK. Right now, i have 3,24 out of 4,00 and if all my score gets an A, my IPK will be raised to 3,30. Well.. let's wait for a few weeks, and we will get an updated grades of all subjects

Friday, December 10, 2004

Three hours ago, i started my second exam, compiler and now, it's finished with a big sucess. Now, i should wait for my grades that will come out in few days (maybe next monday, since it is Friday after all). It was quite complicated, even though it was open book, but it was very applicative, so i only use the theory on the book to do the implementation.

In the next two hours, i will face my third and last exam this semester, ethics. We didn't get any material, so i don't know what to study. It worth 60% of our total points so i have to get good mark if i want to get an A mark on this subject.

I also in a rush to get my signature for my reports, since maybe i will be off to Semarang tommorrow with my mother to meet my uncle who has come back from United States for vacation and business purposes. I'm not sure whether i will go to Semarang or not, but it will be decided tonight.

Thursday, December 09, 2004

I'm very exhausted last night, since in the morning, i have to do a presentation and there were eight students who also had their presentation in the same day, so it would take 4 hours to get it finished, since we didn't allowed to leave the place before all students have finished their presentation. We only had thirty minutes to present our work, but one of my friend spent one hour for her presentation, so we should wait for 4,5 hour, sitting and waiting for our turn and then come sitting back again waiting for the rest. Luckily, my presentation was a big success and i'm pretty sure that i got a good mark for it. Now, i have to finish the administrative and submit the reports, getting a signature, etc, and my field work will be done. Hooraayyy...

When i got home, i started to plug all my computer and got online. I checked my email, writing my blog, and doing some translations about eGroupWare HOWTO v0.5 since i have joined with the contributor team for the translation of eGroupWare install and security HOWTO into Indonesian language. It's on progress and it should be finished this week, but i can't guarantee that. Information about this HOWTO will published on my personal page in project page.

This mourning at 3 AM, i saw Real Madrid crushing on AS ROMA to advance to the next level of the Champion League, but unfortunately Manchester United lost 2-0 against Fennerbache, but that doesn't affect the table, since Manchester United has advanced to the next level from the earlier match.

Wednesday, December 08, 2004

After delivering Windows XP Service Pack 2 which leads to some controversial (in my case, i didn't experience the bad impact after installing SP 2, even though many people seems to have the same effect that i had, much secure and better system) that caused some company delayed their deployment to SP 2 until they are ready to install it, Microsoft Corporation has launched another Service Pack. This time, it is for their latest operating system, Windows Server 2003. This is not a final Service Pack, but rather a Service Pack 1 Release Candidate. You can try this Service Pack by downloading it via Download Page. Here is the product overview of the Service Pack 1 from Microsoft:

Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 (SP1) delivers on the promise of Microsoft's Trustworthy Computing initiative and illustrates Microsoft’s commitment to creating software products with enhanced security, increased reliability, and simplified administration. SP1 builds upon the impressive track record of the award winning Windows Server 2003 operating system by providing refinements and supplying cumulative system patches.

If you want to see what will be changed in Service Pack 1, download this file. You can also see the FAQ before you install it. And here is 10 reason to install Service Pack 1 for Windows 2003 (you don't have to believe it) :

Reduce your servers attack surface.

Security Configuration Wizard (SCW), one of the new features added to Windows Server 2003 in Service Pack 1 (SP1), uses an intuitive, role-based process to guide administrators through reducing the attack surface. With SCW you can disable unused services easily and quickly, block unnecessary ports, modify registry values, and configure audit settings.

Help protect newly installed servers.

In today's security environment there is a continual search for new and potentially exploitable system vulnerabilities. Post-Setup Security Updates (PSSU), another new feature of Windows Server 2003 SP1, blocks all incoming traffic to newly installed servers until the latest patches to Windows Server 2003 are downloaded and applied. PSSU also guides configuration of Automatic Updates when you first log on.

Get firewall protection from startup to shutdown.

Windows Firewall, the same core firewall technology in Windows XP Service Pack 2, is built into Windows Server 2003 SP1. Windows Firewall in Windows Server 2003 SP1 allows granular control over server and client computers through the use of Group Policy. Moreover, Windows Firewall provides boot-time protection, lowering the risk of attack just after a server is started up and while it is shutting down.

Bolster your defenses with "no execute" hardware support and software.

Data execution prevention (DEP) is a set of hardware and software technologies that performs additional checks on memory to help protect against exploitation of your system by malicious code. Windows Server 2003 SP1 fully utilizes the DEP capabilities built into servers by many manufacturers and further augments those capabilities with DEP software of its own.

Help protect your system services with stronger default settings and reducing privileges.

Services such as remote procedure call (RPC) and DCOM are integral to Windows Server 2003 and make an attractive target for hackers. By requiring greater authentication for calls of these services, Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 helps establishe a minimum threshold of security for all applications that use these services, even if they possess little or no inherent security.

Isolate out-of-date virtual private network (VPN) assets.

VPN Quarantine automatically provides the means for limiting network access for machines on virtual private networks that are not current with regards to security updates. This prevents you from having to write your own ad hoc scripts to affect this facet of sound network security.

The metabase is the XML-based, hierarchical store of configuration information for Internet Information Services 6.0. The ability to audit this store allows network administrators to see which user accessed the metabase in case it becomes corrupted.

Windows Firewall Policy Management

Windows Server 2003 SP1 includes new Group Policies that help IT Pros centralize client and server firewall management, including application rules, port rules, and firewall logging at the client and server to help improve security in the enterprise while maintaining centralized configuration and deployment.

Tuesday, December 07, 2004

Few hours ago, i have just finished my first exam, robotics experimental. It was quite success and my next exam will be held in Thursday. Tommorrow, i will have to some presentation about my field work and i'm so nervous, since there will be two lecturers and six other students who also have to present their work for about four months.

After posting this blog, i will unplug all of my computer's cable and prepare it for tommorrow's presentation, since it will begin at 10 AM and i have to prepare all of them carefully, such as reports, grade form, and my computer as well (such as lowering the refresh rate, so it won't display out of frequency error messages). After that, i will have to go to my girlfriends's house and then refill her printer, since it was empty. Well... can't write a long blog today :)

Monday, December 06, 2004

My uncle bought a new drum for his son (my cousin) and it was placed on the warehouse (it already cleaned, repainted, and covered to reduce the sound, but i can still hear the sound, since my bedroom is about 2 meters just in front of the warehouse it's on the back of my house). The room has also a great place to sleep, since it has been equipped with air conditioner, but i haven't tried that yet :)

From now on, there will be a new sound from the warehouse and it's not a ghost. It's just a sound from a drum that was bought by my uncle. Maybe i will play it too, but i'm not too sure, since i have never experienced with music instruments before and i prefer to listen rather than playing it.

Sunday, December 05, 2004

For an OpenSource application, there are no exact date when to release a newer version, but for some developers, they have set their own, such as Gaim who set three weeks for their development time and they will release their new version after three weeks. For bigger project, such as KDE, the development time will be much longer, about six months.

This time, Gaim project has fulfilled their promises again. They release another version of Gaim, 1.1.0 (another big jump from 1.0.3) yesterday, even though it was published today (i have already downloaded them yesterday since it was posted at Majorgeeks, a site who publishes a 'state of the art' application, even though it's not officialy published yet by their developers). I also downloaded Winamp 5.07 one day before they are published to public. They truly provides an updates for application maniacs. If you want to get their latest update, please use their RSS to get informed. They updated their RSS very quickly, so make sure you don't miss your news.

PS : They only publishes Windows application, but because Gaim is also available on Windows platform, it can be used also :)

Saturday, December 04, 2004

Today is my first day updating my FTP server. I got to my campuss at 7.30 AM and start searching for any new tools that usually used by any staff at my campuss. As my previous post, we are looking for a GPL-licensed or Freeware application. The first application that we can get is image viewer. Our choice comes to Irvan View which has a great feature and also a complete plugins in a separate application. It can be compared with ACDSee, a professional image viewer which includes a package for image editing also.

We don't have much change to find and download many files, since more and more people came to the lab and start consuming the bandwidth. So we will have to use Vixie Cron to do our jobs. We collect the URL to the application and we will schedule our download time when there are no students are using any bandwidth at all, which will be at night. Tommorrow, we will have some of our packages updated with a fresher package. Happy downloading with wget :)

Friday, December 03, 2004

In the next few weeks, i will help my university system administrator to update files in our FTP servers. The old files will be removed since it is out-dated and they may be not supported anymore or contains bugs that should be fixed in the newer version. This process will take a few days maybe week, since there are a lot of application that should be replaced with the latest one. We are looking an application which is GPL-licensed, but in an Alpha/Beta phase, instead in stable or mature phase. It's kindda hard to ensure students to use OpenSource application, since they tends to believe that commercial application is better.

My university is planning to upgrade it's Internet connection from 512 Kbps to 2 Mbps, but i don't know when will it be happen, but i'm sure it's not this year. I hope that it can be realized as soon as possible, since Internet connection is one of the primary need for computer science students who have to look for materials over the Internet. I was hoping that in the next two years, our university will adapt the WLAN technology, because Wireless technology has become very active technology and it's a common technology now. Let's hope that it will implement the next generation of Wireless technology from Intel, called WiMAX that can give wider bandwidth at longer distance compared to the original Wireless technology (802.11a, 802.11b, or 802.11g). This technology will be called 802.16 and 802.16a for the client that supports it. It is published it Intel Developer Forum few weeks ago. For more information about this event, please refer to IDF event.

Thursday, December 02, 2004

Today is the last day before i will face the final exam that will start tommorrow. But my test will be started at Saturday and i only have to submit my paper and that's all for one day. My next test will be on Tuesday and it will be robotics. The last two exams will be held in the same day, which will be ethics and compiler. Can't wait to get this semester finished in just a few days.

As the end of the semester, my faculty will open a change for assistant recruitment for the next semester. I don't know whether i will take this job again or not. I have been an assistant for five semester up to now and next semester i will take my final project. This is going to be a major consideration, since i have to finish the project in one semester so that i can be graduated in April or October (it i can't make it to April). Next semester will be my last change to become an assistant, since after that, i won't be an assistant again, but maybe a lecturer. Pretty hard decision, but i will make it before next semester begins.

Wednesday, December 01, 2004

GNU/Linux is far from a title "Perfect Operating System", just like the other Operating System, including Windows and Mac OS, especially when it's related to hardware detection, such as Modems. In Linux's platform, there are two type of modems. The first is the real modems and the second one if a winmodems and sometimes referred to as software or controllerless modems, they tend to be less expensive than controller-based modems. The real modem (it will be named modem for now on) is often an external modem which has a capability to run it's own process without utilizing processors, while winmodem will use computer's processors to do some processing, such as converting analog/digital signals. Winmodems works perfectly in Windows, but in Linux, this type of modem is rarely supported by default. You might have to look for the perfect driver on the Internet, install, and configure it manually.

However, if your system came with a Winmodem, all is not lost. The Linux community is nothing if not resourceful. Even when manufacturers are slow to notice Linux users, the same isn't true the other way around. As more and more people run Linux, this becomes less and less of a problem. In time, hardware manufacturers may be building for Linux first and Windows second. In the meantime, there are a couple of things you can and should do. The first place to look is your Linux distribution. Commercial Linux distributions sometimes provide drivers (SUSE and Mandrake come to mind). This usually involves purchasing the boxed sets as opposed to just downloading an image and burning your free distribution. If that doesn't bring you any satisfaction, check out the Linmodems.Org Web site at http://www.linmodems.org and you should be up and running shortly. Another great companion site is the "Winmodems are not modems" site at http://start.at/modem. Tons of information here including a fantastic list of what modems work, don't work, and everything in between.